Crawl Space Vapor Barrier Prevents Mold Mitigation in Springfield Missouri
If your home has a crawl space, it’s likely you’ve never climbed underneath your house to check it out. But if you’ve been inside your crawl space and noticed that you have a dirt floor, you might wonder if it’s okay to have all that exposed earth underneath your home.
Not really. If you have a crawl space in the Ozarks, then your dirt floor should be covered with a vapor barrier. We live in an area where our ground has a lot of moisture coming up from natural soil evaporation.
In the Ozarks, they say that about 18 gallons a day can come up from natural soil evaporation. That’s a lot of moisture coming up that is trapped inside your crawl space.
But with a properly installed vapor barrier, that cuts the moisture down to 1/2 a gallon a day. Quite the difference.
With all the moisture that an unprotected crawl space floor is exposed to, you could be looking at numerous issues in your crawl space that could have been prevented.
Excess moisture in your crawl space causes mold growth on your floor joists and sub-flooring. The wet environment is an ideal breeding ground for wood destroying insects like termites, and other unwanted insects such as spiders, cockroaches, silverfish, centipedes, ants, mosquitoes, and more.
Insects aren’t the only critters that like damp, dark, areas such as your crawl space. Mice and other rodents like it too. They can leave behind a lot of waste or even die down there, leaving you with foul odors rising up into your home, as well as unhealthy air that your family is breathing.
When you install a vapor barrier in your crawl space, you cut out the moisture that causes all these things that are unhealthy to breathe, as well as expensive to fix.
Getting rid of a few mice won’t break the bank, but an extensive mold mitigation for a large crawl space can add up quickly. So can replacing rotted rim joists and sub-flooring.
It’s a simple fix to prevent this excess ground moisture from wreaking havoc in your crawl space. A vapor barrier installation can quickly eliminate these future problems.
You want a minimum of 10 millimeter thick virgin poly for the installation, combined with weatherproof, crawl space designed tape, and the right crawl space company to properly install it.
If you want to hire a company that you can trust to prevent future crawl space problems as well as fix any existing crawl space issues with expert mold mitigation, look no further than the team at Dog Gone Mold. We’re here to help.